Slab Rat: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Fun but flawed
Review: If you've ever worked in an office, particularly an office at a large American company, and even more so, if you have had the misfortune as I have had of working for a large American Publishing house, then you are going to LOVE this book. It creates perfectly the two-faced, backstabbing, high-pressure atmosphere in the world of magazine publishing.

The main character is another product of the current fashion for novels about 20 and 30-something losers-doing-better-than-you'd-expect, (Think Bridget Jones, Come together, Are you Experienced..). Not that that's a bad thing - their exploits always make for amusing light reading and you can't help being attracted to them and their shallow but vibrant lives.

The difference with Slab Rat is that it has real bite; the humour is beautifully dark and skewed. The characters inspire real hatred in the reader and you genuinely feel like giving some of them a good kick up the jacksie. :-)

You KNOW how it will end before you're even half way through the novel but that doesn't matter because the journeys of the individual characters are so engrossing to read about. Whether they are believable is another, and frankly, irrelevant matter.

The only fault I can pick with "Slab Rat" is one that recent reviews in the press have picked - that while Heller tries to faithfully recreate the world of glossy mag publishing, he falls short on minor, but oh-so-important details: no woman at a fashion magazine would be seen dead wearing a scrunchie for example. The whole thing feels very much like a first novel, and you get he impression that it could have been so much better in the hands of a more practised and accomplished author. BUT it remains good light reading, and to write that, you don't need to be Proust or Bronte - you just need to be able to dream up a corking sotry and great characters, and Heller has succeeded with that in "Slab Rat".

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious! One of the Best Books I've Read in Awhile
Review: The characters in this book are priceless-- 3 dimensional portraits that humorously depict common human insecurities and frailties. Slab Rats is also a tremendous look at intra-office rivalries and relationships. It presents an accurate-- unfortunately for Northeasters, a bit too accurate- satire of the snobbery and Ivy-league elitism that still dominates the New York professional world. A must read. On to Funneymen, which, if it's half as good as Slap Rats, will quickly vault Heller to my short list of favorite authors.

Rating:
Summary: MUST READ!
Review: To say that Slab Rat is a book about the media or about the magazine business is to deprive it of the justice this book richly deserves. Slab Rat is about men and women at work and in and out of love, about what work does to you and what it makes people do to each other, for better or worse. It is also a laugh-out-loud funny novel, perhaps the funniest book I've read since Brigid Jones or High Fidelity. The insight is keen, the comedy is dark, the writing is crisp and crystal clear. The narrator is somehow sympathetic and despicable at the same time...yet you will wind up rooting for him because everyone else is worse. For every dark moment in Slab Rat, though, there will be two or three moments of giddy and exhilirating laughter. This is a MUST READ book.